DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO  Mayor Bob Filner successfully vetoed four of his own appointments to the city’s pension board this week in an unusual move that added another wrinkle to the current chaos at City Hall.

Filner’s stated reason for the reversal was a desire to add more diversity to the volunteer board while City Council critics described it as retaliation for the independent board’s refusal to lower San Diego’s annual pension payment in a June 28 vote. That decision blew a $25 million hole in the city’s budget and forced Filner and the council to cancel plans to hire additional police officers and increase library hours.

One of Filner’s appointees — board President Herb Morgan — led the argument against lowering the bill. He questioned how the already significantly underfunded pension system would be better off if the city paid less money. The board then fell one vote shy of reducing the city’s payment with Morgan dissenting.

Two of the mayor’s other appointees, Edward Kitrosser and Anthanasios Preovolos, favored lowering the payment while the fourth, Mark Ealy, didn’t cast a vote because he hadn’t been sworn in yet. Ealy has since said he no longer wants to serve, which led Filner to veto all four appointments and start from scratch.

Filner then submitted a new set of nominees July 19 that included Kitrosser and Preovolos but not Morgan.

This mayoral version of musical chairs led to a heated debate Tuesday, as the City Council weighed whether or not to override Filner’s veto. Some council members questioned why the mayor would veto the appointments he vetted and put forward last month when he could have more easily nominated a replacement for Ealy.

Council President Todd Gloria noted the awkwardness of Filner vetoing his own nominees and Lee Burdick, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff, responded.

“Yes, Mr. Gloria, I think that is a political reality and yet some principles override how things look,” Burdick said. “The principles in this case being given the opportunity to select a more diverse group of candidates.”

Gloria said he wasn’t buying the Filner administration’s insistence that diversity was the reason behind the change.

“Well that doesn’t hold water,” he said. “No. 1, Bob Filner was a Freedom Rider in 1961. I don’t believe that his interest in diversity showed up on July 19, the date of this new memo. So if that wasn’t important of the first round nominees, it sure as heck doesn’t all of a sudden apply now.”

Gloria added, “As a person of color, as a Native American-Filipino-Puerto Rican-Dutch-gay guy, diversity is not something that should be used to excuse poor behavior. ... It calls into question the competence of this administration. ... This looks like retaliation.”

The council voted 5-3 in favor of overriding the mayor’s veto but six votes are required so the veto stands and the previous appointments were nixed. Gloria, a Democrat, and the council Republicans supported the veto while Democrats David Alvarez, Myrtle Cole and Sherri Lightner sided with Filner. Democrat Marti Emerald was absent.

Alvarez said he reluctantly supported Filner’s decision.

“As chaotic as this seems and it truly is, I’ve never voted against a mayoral appointee as a council member,” he said. “I think it’s the prerogative of the mayor to appoint the individuals that he wants to serve, that are his appointees, to different boards and commissions. ... In this case, he obviously doesn’t want a particular individual to serve.”

This is now the third dust-up over appointments since Filner took office in December. Filner and Gloria clashed publicly over a disagreement on SANDAG appointments in January. Later that same month, Filner vetoed the council’s port appointments only to have his decision nullified when the City Attorney’s Office determined in April that he had no such authority on port picks.

Morgan, who was appointed to the San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System board in 2009 by then-Mayor Jerry Sanders and reappointed last month by Filner, accused the mayor of trying to interfere with the board’s independent authority. He also called on Filner to resign saying he’s “nothing more than another retread political disgrace with no ethical reason to continue leading the city I love.”

“Mayor Filner’s crass decision to veto his own appointment to this critical board position is an obvious political effort by Mayor Filner to defy sound economic and ethical practices, and to instead return to the days of felony indictments and underfunding city worker pensions that have plagued the city of San Diego during the last 10 years,” Morgan said in a statement.

Kitrosser said, “At this point I feel very frustrated and somewhat disrespected. I do not think this is anyway to treat a volunteer. The SDCERS board is an independent board whose function is to fulfill our fiduciary responsibilities to the plan participants, retirees and beneficiaries in overseeing and protecting the assets of the pension fund. The board should not be subject to political shenanigans, which is what this all seems to be.”

Filner’s new list of nominees were Kitrosser, Preovolos, Jeannie Posner and K. Denise Thompson. In the mayor’s memo, he said the addition of two qualified women would diversify the all-male board.